Chimney Care Company's Blog
Make Your Fireplace More Use-able With Gas Logs
When you bought your home, you probably treasured the open-hearth fireplace. You may have even searched for a home with a fireplace. And why wouldn’t you? Fireplaces add warmth, comfort and ambiance to a home. In addition, they add an element of design to any room and serve as a gathering point for families and friends.
The reality of a wood-burning fireplace, however, is that they often sit unused. Consequently, this means wood-burning fireplaces take a lot of work. Wood must be chopped or purchased, stacked and stored, and hauled into the house. A fire must be built and can be tricky to get burning efficiently. If you would like to make your fireplace more use-able and increase its value in your home, there is a solution: Install gas logs.
Benefits of Gas Logs
The primary benefit of gas logs is convenience. You don’t have to worry about stacking, storing or hauling wood to fuel your fires. In addition, you don’t have to build or tend your fire. Different logs light in different ways. In most cases, you push a button or flip a switch that either ignites the fire or a pilot light. Gas-fueled fires also are cleaner than wood fires. While wood fires can compromise your indoor air quality and fill your neighborhood air with fine particles, gas fires burn much cleaner. They won’t fill your home or your neighborhood with soot.
Types of Gas Logs
Angie’s List suggests two primary styles of gas logs: vented and vent free.
Vented gas logs require a chimney. If you’re installing vented gas logs in an existing wood-burning fireplace, so that might mean that your chimney will have to be relined to accommodate the new fuel type. Vented gas logs produce a yellow flame that more closely mirrors a wood-burning fire.
Vent-free gas logs burn much hotter, burning away most of the byproducts of the fire. As a result, they don’t require a chimney. The hotter fire typically produces a blue flame. In an existing wood-burning fireplace, vent-free gas logs can be installed and burn with the damper closed. Vent-free gas logs also can be installed into a firebox in nearly any room of your home. That makes vent-free gas logs a great option for installing a fireplace in a room that can’t accommodate a vent or a chimney.
Styles of Gas Logs
Another major benefit of gas logs is they come in a variety of styles to suit your home’s decor. There are traditionally designed gas logs that closely mirror the look of real wood logs. They come in different sizes and wood types with different colors and textures. For a more modern look, you can forego logs all together and outfit your fireplace with stones, rocks or multicolored glass stones.
If you are ready to increase the usability of your fireplace, call The Chimney Care Co. today! We can talk to you about your different gas log options to make your fireplace more attractive and easier to use.
Signs Your Dryer Vents Needs to be Cleaned
Just like your chimney, your clothing dryer vent requires regular cleaning to prevent it from becoming 
clogged with debris and posing fire and carbon monoxide hazards. Each time you dry a load of laundry, tiny pieces of moist lint bypass the lint screen. First, those moist pieces of lint cling to the sides of your dryer vent, and then they cling to each other until the vent becomes clogged. A clogged vent can overheat, igniting the highly flammable lint or your dryer’s heating mechanism, or it can block carbon monoxide from exiting the vent, forcing it back into your home.
Because of these dangers, the National Fire Protection Association recommends that dryer vents are cleaned at least once per year, or more often for dryers that do a high volume of laundry. When it comes to determining whether your dryer vent need to be cleaned, your dryer will send you signs that its vent is clogged with lint and are no longer working properly. Those signs include:
- Longer than normal drying times. When your dryer isn’t venting properly, it can no longer operate efficiently. That means it takes longer to dry each load of clothes. One of the first signs that a vent is dirty is clothes that are still wet when the drying cycle stops.
- Laundry that is hot to the touch. A clogged vent prevents heat from escaping the dryer. That means you may notice that clothes feel unusually hot when the cycle ends and you go to remove them from the dryer.
- An overheated laundry room. Similarly, if heat isn’t escaping your dryer, it will build up within the laundry room. If your laundry room becomes warm when the dryer is running, that is a sure sign the dryer vent needs to be cleaned.
- A burning, musty or overwhelming laundry smell. A clogged dryer vent also can cause odors to permeate your laundry room when the dryer is in operation. When the vent is clogged, you may smell a burning odor, a musty odor or the overwhelming scent of your fabric softener.
- The accumulation of lint or debris. If lint has filled your dryer vent, new lint doesn’t have anywhere else to go. If the vent is clogged, you may notice lint or debris accumulating around the lint trap, behind the dryer or even on the ground below the spot where the dryer vent exits the home.
- A closed dryer vent flap. The flap that covers your dryer vent outside should open when the dryer is in use, with the force of the air that is being exhausted. If that flap is remaining closed, it means that air is no longer escaping through the dryer vent.
If you notice any of these signs that your dryer vent has become clogged with lint, call The Chimney Care Co. today to schedule a dryer vent cleaning. Our technicians will use rotating brushes to loosen the lint from your dryer vent and then clear away the debris with a high-powered vacuum. We will also inspect your dryer vent system to ensure that it is free from damage and exhausting your dryer safely and efficiently.